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From Holbein to hard-core porn, a critical exploration of male orgasm in Western culture.

Aristotle believed semen to be the purest of all bodily secretions, a vehicle for the spirit or psyche that gives form to substance. For Proust’s narrator in Swann’s Way, waking to find he has experienced a nocturnal emission, it is the product of “some misplacing of my thigh.” The heavy metal band Metallica used it to adorn an album cover. Beyond its biological function, semen has been applied with surprising frequency to metaphorical and narratological purposes.

In Images of Bliss, Murat Aydemir undertakes an original and extensive analysis of images of male orgasm and semen. In a series of detailed case studies—Aristotle’s On the Generation of Animals; Andres Serrano’s use of bodily fluids in his art; paintings by Holbein and Leonardo; Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; hard-core pornography (both straight and gay); and key texts from the poststructuralist canon, including Lacan on the phallus, Bataille on expenditure, Barthes on bliss, and Derrida on dissemination—Aydemir traces the complex and often contradictory possibilities for imagination, description, and cognition that both the idea and the reality of semen make available. In particular, he foregrounds the significance of male ejaculation for masculine subjectivity. More often than not, Aydemir argues, the event or object of ejaculation emerges as the instance through which identity, meaning, and gender are not so much affirmed as they are relentlessly and productively questioned, complicated, and displaced.

Combining close readings of diverse works with subtle theoretical elaboration and a keen eye for the cultural ideals and anxieties attached to sexuality, Images of Bliss offers a convincing and long overdue critical exploration of ejaculation in Western culture.

“Images of Bliss is marked by a wry sense of humor and a commitment to cultural dissection of literary and artistic works.” —Bitch Magazine

“There’s something sexy, pleasurable, and original in this dense, philosophical, clearly learned study of male orgasm.” —Virginia Quarterly Review

“Images of Bliss is lucid and engaging in its analysis of cultural artifacts, whether Proust or pornography. There is much to be gleaned from this intriguing book from which much pleasure, or jouissance, can be obtained.” —Journal of Men, Masculinities, and Spirituality

384 pages | 12 halftones | 6 1⁄8 x 9 1⁄4 | 2007

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. History, Art

1. Semen, Blood, Stars, and Ice: Serrano and Aristotle

Blood — Squigglies and Claret — “As it were a deformed male” — Why Semen Matters More — The Illustrated Aristotle, Part I — Stars — Inconceivable — Soiled White: Bataille — Graphic White: Derrida — Baroque White: Bal — The Illustrated Aristotle, Part II — Ice — The Illustrated Aristotle, Part III

Part II. Psychoanalysis

2. Image of the Vital Flow: Lacan

Noeud/Nous — The Name of the Phallus — The Story’s Set-up — Graphic Concatenation: When Phallus Meets Signifiable — Bastard Offspring — The Magician and the Veil — Shame as Awkward Self-Reflexivity

3. Anamorphosis / Metamorphosis: Ambassadors

Delicious Game — Cool Men — Twin Ambassadors — Spot the Differences: Embarrassing Embrasse — Man in Black: Melancholia and Empire

4. The Parting Veil: Angel in the Flesh

The Specter Haunting Male Morphology — Othering the Body: A Comedy — The Deictic Veil and the Phallus/Penis — Every Temptation — Smile and Breast: Double-Crossing Gender

Part III. Pornography

5. Significant Discharge: The Cum Shot and Narrativity

Introducing the Cum Shot — Justine: “I can’t believe you just came” — The Climax of Involuntary Spasm — “I was not finished” — Return and Repetition

6. Levering Ejaculation

Porn as Opera or Musical — Va(s)cillation — Abjection — Staining the Image — Hand — “Lass es gehen” — Coda: Female Ejaculation

7. “Now Take One of Me As I Come”: Pornographic Realities

Hard Core — Mundane Details: Reality-Effect — Sexual Theatrics — The Meaning of Moustaches: Verisimilitude — Bazzo’s Escape

Part IV. Theory

8. The Suspense and Suspension of Bliss: Barthes

Connoisseur — Taking One’s Pleasure — Being Taken by Bliss — The Certain Body — From Suspense to Suspension: Tumbling or Freezing Narrative — Upstaging the Father — Wandering Seeds

9. Dissimulating the Supreme Spasm: Derrida

Trance — Lucky Word — Masculinity: Desire and Hysteria — Supreme Spasm — Semen as Pharmakon — Singular Plural — The Sperm’s Tail as Supplement — Closing Opening

10. Anxiety and Intimacy of Expenditure: Bataille

Hostile Expenditures between Men — Globular Droplets — Male Guinea Pigs — Intimacy of Expenditure — The Eye of the Story — Draining Masculinity — Concepts of Ejaculation

Part V. Literature

11. Misplaced Thigh: Proust

Beginnings — Adam’s Rib — Jupiter’s Thigh — From Wet Dream to Bad Dream

12. Gossamer Thread

“Gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh!” — Natural Trail — Solitary Pleasure — Gaze — The Lilac — Silvery Trace

13. A Few Drops That Express All

Adolphe — Norpois — Men in Cubicles — Behind the Curtain with Swann — Re-searching Masculinity

Epilogue: Forcing the Issue

Color — Scale — Plane — Temporality — Part/Whole — Opposition/Entanglement — Conception/Inconceivable — Imminent/Immanent — Graphic

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Murat Aydemir is assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Amsterdam.